1-0 OT Win Advances Dunwoody To Second Round of the GHSA Girls Soccer Playoffs
On Tuesday, the Georgia High School Association soccer state championship tournaments got underway with round one action and in Class 7A, the No. 1 seeded Dunwoody Wildcats hosted the No. 4 seeded Etowah Eagles in a match in which you could through seedings out the window as the two teams battle into overtime periods.
A physical and tough contest, the regulation periods would come to an end with neither team able to connect for a goal, despite both the Wildcats and Eagles each looking good with touches and having over 10 shots on goal throughout the halves. However, both teams played with solid backline and goalie performances and that would eventually force the game into overtime periods.
And it would be in the first period of overtime that Dunwoody would finally get on the board after a corner kick would lead to a header goal by Julia Guild, giving the Wildcats a 1-0 lead with less than three minutes to go in the first overtime. The Wildcats continued to get solid production from their backline defenders throughout the remainder of the game, not allowing the Eagles to score as Dunwoody picked up the win.
“I tried to put it on my seniors and I just told them, ‘we’ve got 20 minutes left. Our season’s on 20 minutes’ and it was effort,” Dunwoody head coach, Nafis Karim, said after the Wildcats win on Tuesday. Karim did not hesitate to praise Etowah for how great of a team they were and knew that the outcome would “come down to who wanted it more and I just wanted them to prove that on the field”.
The Wildcats win sets them up for a second round match up with the No. 2 seeded Hillgrove Hawks on Monday, April 18th and for Karim, there’s without a doubt some things he wants his girls to work on in preparation for Hillgrove. “I definitely want to clean up touches, but finishing. We’ve been talking about finishing all year and when we get in those big games, we’re not going to get many opportunities, so we need to take advantage of our opportunities to finish,” Karim said.
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